


now in this twilight, how dare you speak of grace

by A_Lesbian_With_Pink_Hair



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Dark, Implied Assisted Suicide, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-31
Updated: 2014-10-31
Packaged: 2018-02-23 07:57:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2540261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Lesbian_With_Pink_Hair/pseuds/A_Lesbian_With_Pink_Hair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve waits patiently for Bucky to come back to him. And one night, he finally does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	now in this twilight, how dare you speak of grace

**Author's Note:**

> the purpose of this is basically to make you feel sadness so please let me know if that's a thing that happens.
> 
> also the shipping stuff is extremely mild and almost nonexistent sorry
> 
> title comes from the Mumford & Sons song "Broken Crown"

Steve and Sam search for him for months. They’re always just a few steps behind, and Steve figures Bucky wants it that way. He’s a good soldier and he’s a great strategist and tactician, but Captain America is no spy. Natasha likes to remind him of that whenever she gets the chance. Where Steve thrives in direct combat, Natasha (and Bucky, now, too) thrives in shadow and secret.

So they go home, home to DC. Steve gets a new apartment close to Sam’s, a small place with two bedrooms (hopeful, presumptuous) and a kitchen twice the size of the one in the rat hole he’d lived with Bucky a lifetime ago.

Steve goes home and he waits. He runs with Sam every morning, occasionally comes home to Nat (who has no key to his apartment) on his couch watching television and the three of them eat together. Sometimes she brings Clint along with her. He even meets with Bruce Banner once, during the elusive scientist’s rare visit to the States.

But he doesn’t see Bucky for an entire year. Nat gives him reports of a mysterious man with a metal arm destroying HYDRA facilities in California, in Canada, in Bosnia, in Russia, in Mexico. The Winter Soldier is alive and methodically removing the facilities of the organization who had wronged him.

“He’s looking for revenge,” Nat suggests over Chinese takeout.

“Nah,” Sam disagrees, reaching for the fried rice. “It’s closure. His memories are probably coming back to him; that started the moment he saw Cap here... and he’s not on ice any more. HYDRA don’t have their hands on him anymore.”

“If it were me,” she says thoughtfully, “I would want revenge.”

Steve says, “but Bucky isn’t you.”

She smiles slightly, and shrugs, stuffing a wonton into her mouth.

Steve knows what it is. It isn’t revenge, it isn’t closure. It’s reason. He needs a reason to still be alive after everything he’d been through. For Steve it had been battling Loki in New York, and then working for SHIELD, and now it was waiting for Bucky to come back to him.

And it was only a matter of time. According to Fury, most of HYDRA’s largest bases are gone. Bucky is making his way back to the United States and it is only a matter of time before he comes to find Steve.

What he hopes to find exactly, Steve doesn’t know.

\--

It’s a week later in the dead of night that Steve wakes up all at once. At first he’s not sure what’s woken him. He lays there in the dark, eyes open, unmoving. And then he notices the air in the room is wrong, somehow. There’s another person in there with him.

“Hi, Bucky,” he whispers hoarsely.

Bucky doesn’t answer but Steve knows it’s him. He sits up, switches his bedside lamp on. It’s dim, but in the corner of the room closest to the window stands Bucky Barnes. Or The Winter Soldier. Someone in between the two.

He’s wearing a dark hoodie up over his head, over the Winter Soldier uniform. His hair looks matted, dirty, but about the same length it had been a year ago. At some point Bucky had re-cut it. His stubble is dark, nearly a beard, and his eyes are hard. His hands are in the hoodie pockets but Steve can see a glint of metal at the left wrist in the light.

“Bucky,” Steve says again. He’d rehearsed in his head what he’d say when that moment finally came but now everything he’d practiced was gone. “I’m. Are you...”

“Steve Rogers.” Bucky’s voice is rough from disuse. “Captain America.”

“Yeah. That’s right, Buck.” Steve keeps his voice gentle, not aggressive or confrontational. He doesn’t know what Bucky’s mindset is like now, after a year on his own. What he’s remembered, what’s gone forever, what he feels. “Do you know me?”

Bucky stays tense, like at any moment he could spring into action and go for the kill, or tear out the window and into the night in the blink of an eye. Either seem entirely possible.

“Yeah. I know you,” he answers after a moment. “Today I know you.”

Steve puts his unarmed hands up slightly as he makes to stand in his ratty tee shirt and pajama pants, bare feet against the wooden floor.

“Don’t move!” Suddenly Bucky’s hands have flown from his pockets into a defensive position. His eyes are manic. His sudden movement has dropped the hood from over his head.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Bucky,” Steve murmurs, calming. “I promise. I’ll never hurt you. I’ll never let anythi—“

“You _fucking liar._ ”

“...what?”

Bucky looks him dead in the eyes and snarls. His face is curled up and ugly, and expression he’d never seen on Bucky’s face before.

“I remember. I remember all of it, _Stevie._ ” Steve flinches at the old nickname. Bucky’s anger is caustic and burning. “I remember you. Itty-bitty little slip of nothing. My best pal. Strong wind woulda’ knocked you over and blown you away. Defender of the weak, always gettin’ yourself into fights in back alleys with guys three times your size. Wanted to go off to war but they didn’t want a tiny little thing like you. Asthmatic, colorblind, sickly, barely 90 pounds soaking wet. Prettiest blue eyes in all’a Brooklyn, too. I remember you.”

Steve goes to take a step but Bucky glares him into place.

“I remember they didn’t want you when you offered but they took me. I never told ya. I never enlisted. I was so afraid if I left you, you’d fucking starve. But they drafted me and I went to war. It was so cold over there, Stevie. Not cold like you an’ me sharin’ a bed in the winter. Cold like ice in your bones. Cold so cold it burned you. But I thought, just gotta hang on.

“And then, them Nazis caught us, yeah? But, turns out they ain’t Nazis. They’re HYDRA. And they strap me down to a table and they shoot me up fulla poison and it makes me miss the cold. For days, for weeks, all I know’s my name, my numbers, an’ you. It hurt so bad, Stevie.”

Bucky’s eyes are filled with tears but his expression is rage. Rage at the injustices that have been done to him.

“And then you were there. And you weren’t so little anymore. And I’da followed you to the ends of the earth ‘cuz after all, you came all the way to Europe for me. And they offered me an honorable discharge. And how _fucking stupid I was!_ ” He laughs, but it sounds awful, sounds wrong in his mouth as he rages and cries. “I didn’t _take_ it. Because you were _Captain America_ and you finally had the big healthy body to go with that big stupid heart a’yours. An’ I was a pretty good sniper by then. And I thought maybe I can do what I can to protect him an’ in return, he’ll protect me. Because that’s what ‘until the end of the line’ meant. And Captain America protects everyone. Captain America _saves_ everyone _—_ “

Steve reaches out a hand. “Bucky, _please—“_

_“I AM STILL TALKING!”_ Bucky shouts. “I am still _talking_ , Steve Rogers.”

Steve’s arms drops to his side.

“You were supposed to take care of me,” he hisses. “You were supposed to be my _friend,_ my _brother—“_

“Bucky, I _was!_ I _did! I did everything I could do for you, my whole life!_ I don’t understand—“

“ ** _WHY DIDN’T YOU CATCH ME?_** ” Bucky roars, louder than Steve has ever heard him in all their long lives. Then his voice breaks. “I _fell_. All that long way into the ice. Why didn’t you _catch_ me, Steve?”

“...I tried to,” Steve says brokenly. “Christ, Bucky, I tried with everything I had inside me to catch you that day. I swear to God. I swear on my life. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“And why didn’t you _look for me?_ I know what I chose. I chose to follow Captain America into the jaws of hell. To follow _you_ anywhere. To die for you if I had to. And you know what? When I was falling? It was okay. I saw you reach for me. And I was falling and I thought, ‘this is enough for me, to die like this.’ And I was happy because I knew you, the best part of who I ever was, was going to live to fight another day.”

For a moment, Bucky almost smiles, but then his face hardens again.

“If only I had died that day,” he whispered. “If I had died that day, I would be sittin’ in the afterlife, pleased as punch with myself for what I did for my country. For what I did for you.”

“Please—“

“I didn’t _die_ , Steve. I lived. Whatever it was Zola did to me. I lived. And I sat in the snow for hours at the bottom of a FUCKING RAVINE waiting either to die or for you to come and save me. I almost bled out in the snow, most of my left arm torn off, hanging by part of my _bones._ Wish I had bled out. Fucking wish to God I died that day.”

“No!” Steve gives up staying put, lunges to where Bucky is, resting a hand on each shoulder. Bucky lets him do it. “Don’t say that, Buck. You’re _alive_. Isn’t that—“

Bucky glares at him. “How _dare you_ say that to me, Steve Rogers!? How _dare_ you tell me to be _grateful for my life_ now. I spent _seventy god forsaken years in **hell** _ while **_you_** took a _long fucking nap._ You fucking _slept in the ice_ and do you know what I did? Do you want to know, Stevie?”

Steve looks defeated. “What, Buck?”

“I waited for _you_ , at first,” Bucky snarls. “They didn’t wipe my memories for the first few months. First thing they did was hook this fancy new arm of mine up to my spine. Most of it they did while I was asleep. But a lot of maintenance they needed me awake. To see if it was connected to the right nerves. They’d shoot me full of drugs, beat me if I cried out, tortured me and conditioned me to respond to VOICE COMMANDS like some kind of horrifying DOG. And I kept telling myself you would come for me like you did before. Like you always did in the end, for me. You was my guardian angel or some shit, Stevie. They treated me like an animal. Like a _thing._ Didn’t even feed me solid food, you know that? All my food was through an IV. The memory wiping was later. Took about half a year to wipe _me_ all the way out. To be the Winter Soldier they wanted from me. The Asset. And they tore my memories away from me kicking and screaming. Eventually I couldn’t remember who you were, but I could see you, sometimes big, sometimes small. And in the back of my mind the parts of me that were still me kept thinking, that’s the guy who’s gonna save me from this hell. And you didn’t come. And I would cry, and they’d beat the living shit out of me. Because the Winter Soldier? He don’t cry. They taught me a thousand ways to kill a guy. Sometimes they couldn’t control me so good. Take away someone’s moral code, give ‘em a weapon, and, well. They reached in me, ripped all the good right out. There’s nothing good left inside of me anymore.”

“Bucky.” Steve reaches slowly to wipe away tears from Bucky’s face, but Bucky doesn’t stop.

“The freezing was the worst part. I was like a tool. They put me in the freezer when they didn’t need me and they woke me up when someone needed killing. And I’ve killed so many people, Steve. God, fucking shit, I killed them all... I killed Howard. You remember him, that smug son of a bitch. I liked him. I killed him. And his pretty wife too. I’ve killed _children_. And you know what? As the Winter Soldier? I _liked_ it. Didn’t know nothing else but the kill. And it was so good, Stevie, you have no idea what it was like. Felt so good to make someone else die. Nothin’ hurt when I was him. But you know what the darnedest thing was? Do you, Steve?”

Steve is crying too. “No, I don’t.”

“’Bout thirty or forty years ago, my handler became a man. A handsome, strong-lookin’ young guy with blond hair and pretty blue eyes. Alexander Pierce.”

“ _Bucky_.”

“Yeah. That’s right. He looked a lot like you. Even when I couldn’t remember you, I was yours. Once he came around I was easier to control. He’s dead now, yeah?”

Steve nods. “Nick Fury killed him.”

“Good.”

Bucky nods, maybe to himself. “But that day on the bridge. I saw you and at first I thought it was him. But I guess all along some part of me thought he was you. Because I would always follow you and as the Winter Soldier, I would always obey. No other option. Didn’t even know it’d been seventy years until recently. I was born as the Asset. I had always been the Asset. I would be the Asset forever. Seventy years though, really? But for the Winter Soldier time don’t exist so much like that. Some days I wake up and I sit for hours waiting for one of my handlers to come maintenance my arm and then wipe me. Other days I remember everything. Sometimes it’s only bits and pieces. Went around destroying all the HYDRA bases I knew, and then a few I didn’t until some agents offered information and begged for mercy.”

“Did you give it them?”

“No.”

Bucky falls silent, not passive, just calculating. Then Steve realizes.

“Are you here to kill me too?” Steve asks calmly.

“Yes,” Bucky replies nonchalantly. “Or I was. But now...”

“But now you’re not?”

“What’s the point? Killing them made the world safer for people. And I don’t even know if I care about that so much as that I don’t want them to make another me. Another... _this._ So I’m okay with killing them. But with you, it’s different.”

“Why?”

“Because they did it out of malice for other people. They did it to make something to hurt other people. You? You did this to me too. But not like they did. Not on purpose. You’re _good._ You save people. Not like me. I killed them because I hated them, because that was why I was made. But you. You ain’t never done nothing out of malice.”

Steve shakes his head. “You’re wrong.”

Bucky tilts his head.

“After. After you fell. And I thought you were dead. Planning to take down Red Skull. Crashing the plane into the ice. I did that. Out of malice. I knew killing him would protect people, countless people, but that wasn’t why I did it. I did it because I was angry. ‘Cuz he took you away from me. Peggy told me to give you the dignity of your choice and I wanted to. But I was still angry. And I crashed his plane. And I was supposed to die in it too. And I spent the last two years wishing I had. Because now? Now the Commandoes are all gone and Peggy has dementia, so half the time she doesn’t know who I am, and the other half she can’t remember when she is.”

“...You should’a had a life with her,” Bucky says after a moment.

Steve smiles sadly. “She was the only one who ever looked at me when I was skinny like she wanted to dance.”

“Not the only one.”

“What?”

“Well. It don’t matter now. But back then? I couldn’t _stop_ lookin’ at you. Went out dancing all the time just to think about someone else. I was terrified. Didn’t want to get strung up like a criminal for bein’ hot for my best pal. I wasn’t as brave as those queers in our neighborhood. But I thought about it. And I looked at you. But that was then. That was a lifetime ago though.”

Steve rests his forehead against Bucky’s.

“I think we’ve both lived too long,” he says. “And I’m tired. Aren’t you tired of being alone like this?”

A corner of Bucky’s mouth tilts up. “Whatcha saying, Stevie? You want to start a new life together or some shit?”

“I want whatever you’ll give me,” Steve answers honestly.

Bucky laughs, once, harshly. “I don’t want to give you anything, Steve Rogers. I gave exactly what I promised when I joined the Howling Commandoes. I was happy to do that. I _wanted_ to do that. But I didn’t want _this._ I didn’t want to become this. This monster. I’m not a person anymore, Stevie. I gave that away. I gave my life. And I don’t have anything left to give you.”

Steve lifts his head away, but doesn’t go far.

“Can I give _you_ something?”

“I don’t want anything from you.”

“You look like you could use a shower. And your hair is matted. And you’re wearing the same thing I saw you in a year ago. I have a spare bedroom. And access to therapy. I have food and now I have Wifi since Natasha told me she’d never come over again if I didn’t install it.”

Bucky frowns. “I don’t want it.”

“Too bad. It’s yours. Because I know how angry you are. I _know._ You had your whole life taken from you. But you know what? I did too. Not like you did. God, I’d do anything to be able to trade places with you that day.”

This makes Bucky balk. “Don’t you dare say that to me. You don’t know how it felt when they did what they did. The days it hurt the worst, I would trade places with anyone. Even you. You don’t know that kind of pain. Don’t you dare.”

“You’re right. I don’t. But I know how it felt to crash that plane into the ice. And I know how it felt to wake up and have someone say, ‘everyone you loved is dead or can’t remember you’. And I know how it feels to be a man out of time. I know how it feels to search desperately for purpose. And at first it was focusing on the fight against Loki in New York.”

“An alien army in NYC,” Bucky says in wonderment.

“Then I threw myself into work with SHIELD but it didn’t help. I was told I have something called PTSD.”

“What’s that?”

“Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. You most likely have it too... Can’t sleep without nightmares, my bed feels all wrong, I get flashbacks, I feel... sad inside, but not like regular sad. Like a dark pit in my stomach that I’m always trying to climb out of but it keeps getting bigger. Fear. Apparently it’s very common in post-combat soldiers. I didn’t think it was ever going to get better for me. But then, in the middle of SHIELD imploding on itself... there you were. Purpose. And now I have friends, I can put food on the table, I have a nice place in a town I like... and now there’s you. And I’m so sorry, Bucky. I’m so, so, so sorry I didn’t catch you. I’m sorry I didn’t look for you. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you. I’m sorry, Bucky. But I can’t change what happened to you. I can’t change what they did to you. All I can do now is offer you everything I can to help you. And maybe you can find peace.”

Bucky shakes his head. “There is no peace for me.” His glare finally, _finally_ breaks as he begins to sob, and all at once the Winter Soldier sinks to the floor, and Steve drops with him, drawing him into an embrace as tightly as he can. Steve presses his mouth against the top of Bucky’s head.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers, over and over as Bucky cries. “I’m so sorry, Bucky.”

“Why didn’t you _save_ me, Stevie?” he asks again and again. “Why didn’t you save me?”

And they sit there on the floor like that for a while, Bucky’s entire body heaving with sobs he’s held in for seventy years, and Steve holds him on the off chance it makes any difference at all. Steve presses a kiss to Bucky’s forehead.

“Let me save you now,” he begs.

“You can’t,” Bucky says through his sobs. “You can’t. There’s nothing left good inside of me. They _ripped_ it all out of me and it’s gone.”

“It’s not gone, Bucky, I swear to God. I’m going to help you find it. I know it’s in there.”

“ _Why?_ ” he screams.

Steve says, “because it should have been me. You shoulda gone home and met a nice girl and had a family and died old with your grandkids around you. You shouldn’t have spent a lifetime like this. I should have fallen. It shouldn’t have been you.”

Bucky chokes out a laugh through his tears. “Don’t matter now. It was me. And I killed them all. And I came here to kill you, but I can’t do it. Can’t even do that. So now I’m thinking it should go the other way.”

Bucky reaches into his boot and pulls out a wicked-looking knife.

“Here,” he says, handing it to Steve.

“What am I supposed to do with this?”

“You know what to do with it. You know why I’m here _, Captain America_.” Bucky smiles then, broken and wicked and deep dark in his eyes. “It’s time to do your country a service.”

Steve slams his hands against the floor and crawls backwards away from Bucky. “No. No no no no no Bucky no. I’m not gonna do that, Buck, I’m not gonna do that to you.”

“Don’t you see, Stevie? You already did. Those seventy years ago when you didn’t catch me. Bucky Barnes died there in the snow, bled to death in the mountains. Died for his country. Died for _you._ As far as anyone but you is concerned, I’m already dead. And I want you to finish the job. Make me _free,_ Steve. _Save me._ Ain’t that what you wanted to do?”

“I can’t,” Steve whispers. “Not like this. Jesus Christ don’t make me do this.”

“Stevie,” Bucky murmurs, pained. “Please. No one else can do it. I want you to do it. I want... to be saved. I want to be saved. But the way you wanna save me ain’t gonna work. It won’t. I wish it could. I wish I could be what you want. I wish I could be Bucky Barnes again. But I never will be. Because I’m him but I’m also the Soldier. And I’m me. Stuck in between. And it aches, Steve. It _hurts_. I’ve been in pain like this for _seventy years_ after I died for you and you _owe_ it to me.”

“No, Bucky, no, no—“

“Kill me, Stevie. Do it.”

Bucky holds out the knife again, and Steve looks at it in horror, tears streaming down his cheeks as Bucky smiles serenely.

“End my pain. Make me free. _Save me_.”

Steve shakes his head. “I can’t fight you. I’m with you—“

Bucky interrupts, “This is the end of the line for me, Steve Rogers.”

Steve looks into Bucky’s eyes. Cold, unreal, furious and broken. Looks at his metal arm holding the weapon. Not shaking, not wavering. Certain. Steve takes a deep breath and then releases it.

“I’m so sorry,” Steve whispers. “I’m so sorry Bucky.”

Bucky nods. His eyes crinkle and he smiles like he used to a lifetime ago at dames in the dance halls in Brooklyn.

He says, “I forgive you, Stevie.”

Steve reaches for the knife.

**Author's Note:**

> I kept reading fic where Bucky is able to be rehabilitated and I know that's comic canon and it's also my preferred headcanon but I couldn't shake the idea that even though it's not Steve's fault, Bucky is furious that Steve didn't come for him. That Steve didn't catch him. I wanted a scenario where, rather than come to Steve for help and everyone lives happily ever after with a touch of PTSD, Bucky is too angry and too broken for Steve to help him. And he's only able to forgive Steve when Steve sets him free. So that's what I wrote.
> 
> ...I'm gonna go read some fluff now oh man


End file.
